you are all i need
by disasterologist
Summary: in which Austin and Ally heal each other. AustinAlly AU.


_**you are all i need**_

**summary: in which Austin and Ally heal each other. AustinAlly AU.**

hey guys! sorry for my hiatus, ive been hella busy and i havent really had time to write until now. hopefully ill be updating more often this summer :-)) i love you all & thanks for not leaving cx

inspirations:

_paramore's self-titled album and "brand new eyes"_

_tonight alive's "the other side" (full album)_

_blink-182's "take off your pants and jacket"_

_all time low's "don't panic"_

_man overboard's "heart attack" and self-titled album_

**disclaimer: i do not own anything mentioned in this fanfiction, save the plot.**

**thanks for reading! i love you all so much 3**

**((sorry for the 5sos references theyre my second favorite band rn after atl ok bye))**

_**WORD COUNT:**_**_ 3,483_**

* * *

**::::**

_you are all i need_

**::::**

Ally tugs the sleeves of her sweatshirt down, her limp brown hair swaying slightly in the cool night breeze. Her fingers encircle her fat wrists - _her fatfatfat wrists_ - and she cringes. Her stomach growls and she bites her lip. _You don't need food. You'll survive._

"Ally? Ally! It's time for dinner, sweetheart. You need to eat." The voice of her nurse, Madelyn, calls. Ally rolls her eyes and turns around, her slender legs - _don't think like that, you're fat _- gliding past the air flowing through the gap between her thin thighs.

"Come here, darling, you're freezing," Madelyn says, and her arms hug Ally's shoulders and bring her inside. "Now let's go back to your room."

Ally wrenches herself free of Madelyn's grip and leads the way to her room, opening the door. Instantly her line of sight is attacked by band posters of any color and size you could imagine. They're plastered on every space of wall Ally could find, and it's one of the few things Ally is actually proud of. She smiles slightly as her eyes fall upon the wall dedicated solely to her two favorite bands - All Time Low and Tonight Alive.

Because she's a permanent resident at this mental ward, suffering from anorexia, she gets her own private room, and she's allowed to do basically whatever she'd like with it. And because she loves music so much, she's decided to decorate it floor to ceiling with band-related things.

"Come on, dear," Madelyn coaxes, guiding Ally to her bed and laying her down. "Dinner time."

Ally shakes her head almost imperceptibly, biting her tongue. "I don't want it," she says, her voice a hoarse whisper. "I'm not hungry. I'm never hungry. You know that."

"I know, Ally, but ((if you don't swim you'll drown lmao sorry)) if you don't eat, you won't get better." Her nurse says, that familiar look of pity returning to her face. Ally resists the urge to scream profanities at her. "And if you don't get better, you can't go home. You do want to go home, don't you?"

Return to the place that was the cause of her disease? Yeah, she'll pass, thanks. "I don't want to get better. I don't want to go back 'home.'" She puts air quotes around "home," because in reality her "home" isn't much of a home at all. "They don't want me there, and for a good reason. I'm toxic. Nobody wants me anywhere."

"Oh, Ally, sweetheart, we want you here. And when you get better we want you to go back home. You do want to go home. I can feel it. Don't let your head trick you."

"My head makes my decisions for me."

"We know what's best for you, dear. You need to trust us, not yourself. You're not mentally stable. You need to trust us, your caretakers."

Ally clenches her fists, her vision tinged red with rage. How stupid can Madelyn get? Ally's _seventeen_. She's almost an adult. She can make her own decisions. Why can't anyone at this dumbass facility see this? "I can make my own decisions. I'm not a kid anymore, you know."

"Sweetheart - "

"And right now I'm making the decision to not eat dinner because I'm not hungry. Get out. You're not needed."

"Did you take your meds today, Ally? If not, I can get - " Madelyn starts, only to be cut off.

"Out, yes! You can get out! You're not wanted or needed here because _I can handle myself_! I don't want your goddamn meds, I don't want your guidance, and most of all _I don't want you_!" Ally shouts, her words slightly garbled by the massive lump in her throat. With a hurt look on her face, Madelyn exits, leaving Ally alone with both her extreme guilt and her thoughts.

"I mess everything up. Why haven't I killed myself yet?" Ally mutters, digging her fingernails into her thighs. In some sick sort of way, she relishes the pain and understands why people cut their skin.

She stares at the half-moon imprints embedded in her legs for a second, and then snatches her iPod and earbuds from her bedside table. Shoving the buds into her ears, she scrolls through her songs for a bit and then settled for "Love Your Friends Die Laughing" by Man Overboard.

Ally sits on her bed for a while, letting the music consume her. As song after song plays, she gets a restless itching in her feet, and decides to take a walk.

She opens the door and looks around. She doesn't see a living soul, so she walks out and shuts the door with one intention planted firmly in her mind: to get out. She needs to escape or she's pretty sure she'll go even more insane than she already is.

She's nearly out of this hellhole when a hand taps her shoulder. "Fuck," she hisses, convinced she's been caught. She turns around, ready for her punishment - _another week of community service_, she thinks - when she looks up and realizes that she hasn't been caught. It's just another tortured soul stuck in this prison.

She takes the stranger in. He's about a foot taller than her, and she guesses he's around six feet tall. He has warm brown eyes that look strikingly similar to hers. His messy blonde hair falls all over his forehead and skull, and it's a platinum-ish color. His nose is kind of small - or large, Ally's never been good with nose size - and his mouth is a shade of pink most girls would kill for. All in all, he's pretty attractive.

She looks down and realizes he's wearing a Fall Out Boy shirt. A good-looking boy with a music taste that - as far as she can tell - is similar to hers? Jesus. She's never been so astounded.

She pulls an earbud out and asks, "Is there a reason you tapped me on the shoulder?"

He seems nervous, a little shaky, even, so she reaches out and taps the front of his hand as if to say, _you can trust me, it's okay._

"H-hi," he stutters. His voice is pretty high and musical for a boy's, but it doesn't really bother her. He kind of sounds like Jack Barakat, which is more than okay for her. "I'm Austin. I like your shirt."

Ally looks at her t-shirt, messily thrown on and wrinkled, and squints her eyes. "Uh, thanks. I'm a really big fan of Paramore, so the shirt..." She trails off, assuming he'll get the gist of what she's saying. Her voice is small and shaky and makes it seem like she's more nervous than she actually is.

"Paramore is one of my favorite bands." He says slowly, as if he's trying to soak in every detail of this moment. Ally doesn't understand why he'd want to. She's nothing special, just another girl locked up in this place. She's like the rest; she's broken and nothing can fix her.

"Fall Out Boy is one of mine," she says softly, tugging the sleeves of her sweatshirt down. "Their new album is amazing. I think my favorite off of it has to be 'Save Rock and Roll.'"

"Me too. Elton John makes it better," he agrees, tugging the sleeves of his sweatshirt down too.

"And Paramore's new album is one of my favorites too. It's different from their usual stuff, but it's a nice change. I can't choose a favorite song because they all mean so much to me."

"Yeah," he says quietly, still looking a little nervous. "Do you want to take a walk?" He cocks his head, a hopeful gleam in his eye.

"Sure," Ally answers, smiling at him shyly. "I'm listening to Mayday Parade right now. Want a listen?" She offers the earbud out to him, and he accepts it, sliding it into his ear slowly and grinning as he realizes the tune of "A Shot Across The Bow."

To keep the earbuds from falling out of either of their ears, they have to walk pretty close together, but Ally's okay with it. He's nice, hot, and has good music taste. She'll take walking close to him - a stranger - than walking by herself any day.

Austin starts singing along under his breath, and from what she can hear, he's fucking amazing. It's similar to his regular talking voice, but she could listen to him talk all day even though they've only known each other for about five minutes or so. He's seriously talented.

She wonders why he's been put here. Sure, he seems a little apprehensive about approaching new people and talking to them, but he handled their meeting alright. Maybe he's been abandoned here for anxiety, but she has a feeling it's a little more than that. He's not all that skinny, so that rules out anorexia - what she's here for - and bulimia. He's not schizophrenic, she can tell, and he doesn't seem insane. So that leaves...

She's snapped out of her train of thought when Austin hits Hayley's high note in "Brick By Boring Brick." She has no clue how the hell he did that, because she can't even hit that, and she's a girl.

She wolf-whistles when he pauses to take a breath. "You've got some lungs, Austin. And a nice voice. I can't sing that well."

"I bet you can." He already seems more at ease with her, and their banter is flowing naturally. "You're probably better than I am. Pick a song, and I'll listen. We'll bet on it. If you're better than me, you tell me what you're here for. If I'm better than you, I tell you what I'm in here for. Sound like a plan?"

"Yeah. You're better than me though," Ally adds, smirking slightly.

"I still don't know your name," he points out. Ally's smirk fades into a sheepish sort of grin.

"It's Ally."

"'Austin and Ally' has a ring to it, doesn't it?" Austin comments, scrolling through the thousands of songs stored on her device.

"Yeah," she says, smiling softly. "It does."

**::::**

Later that night, when they've both returned to their rooms smiling, she lays in bed and thinks about Austin. He's the only boy who's ever shown a sliver of interest in her, and as they talked on and on, she realized just how much they had in common. The tension between them slowly melted until there was none at all.

She bites back another smile as his face looms in her mind. Glancing over at the clock, she reaches for her iPod and pulls it out of sleep mode. She opens the music app, slips the earbuds into her ears, and lets the smile loose as "Breaking & Entering" by Tonight Alive plays. Her fingers tap meaningless rhythms on the back of her device, and she mouths the words with an unrivaled passion.

She looks at the clock again, which reads "3:51." Then she looks out and jumps as she spots Austin's face hovering over the end of her bed in the darkness. She pulls her earbuds out and shoots him a confused look. "Austin, it's almost four in the morning. How did you get in my room, why are you in my room, and why are you still up at 3:54, now?"

"First, I had a nightmare and I can't fall back asleep after nightmares unless someone sleeps with me, so I thought of you. Second, I was missing you a lot. Third, I kind of stole your key from your pocket. It was morally wrong, yeah, yeah, I know, but I don't care. And fourth, I couldn't fall back asleep. Is that a thorough enough explanation for you?" Austin says, wringing his hands nervously. His blonde hair is tousled from sleep, and his brown eyes are foggy.

"Yeah, um, sure. So you basically want to fall asleep with me?" She asks, wondering if she's got this straight.

"Uh... yeah. If you ((don't know 5sos okay sorry)) don't mind." He says.

"It's... fine," she says after a while. "Hop in." She scoots over and pats the space of bed next to her. "Earbud?" She asks, holding one out to him. Currently her iPod is blasting "Anthem Part Two" by Blink-182, and he accepts without hesitation

"Thanks, Als," he whispers as he climbs in.

"Anything for you."

**::::**

"It's dinner time, Ally," Madelyn calls nervously through the door. She's stopped coming into Ally's room since that night.

"Go away," Ally yells, pressing play on her music again. "Vegas Skies" by The Cab floods her hearing again, and she lays back and lets bliss overtake her. Her eyes flutter closed, and she's almost managed sleep when someone yanks the earbud out of her ear.

"Screw off, Madelyn," she mutters drowsily, batting at whoever pulled the buds out of her ears.

"Do I look like Madelyn to you?" A voice asks teasingly. It takes Ally a second to recognize the owner of the voice, but once she does, she bolts up out of her bed and throws herself at him, her still stick thin arms wrapping around his torso. "I missed you," he mumbles, pulling her in closer for a hug.

"I missed you more, Austin," she says, burying her face in his chest. "I didn't eat at all. I'm still not hungry."

"Ally, you know you need to. Dinner together again tonight?"

"Yes, please."

"You still don't know what I'm here for, do you?" Austin asks, breaking the hug and threading their fingers together. He keeps his other hand behind his back and Ally wonder what for.

"No." Ally says, trying to see what he's hiding in his left hand. The anticipation is killing her. "What's in your hand?"

"You'll find out later, Als, chill. Anyways, so what I'm here at this mental ward for..." He trails off, his hand twitching in hers. "It's kind of a sensitive thing, but you need to know. I don't know if you've done it, but I hope you haven't because it's not pretty and it's not fun and it's awful and addicting and I hate it but I can't stop." Austin pauses, breathing in in an attempt to calm himself down before he tells her. She knows him so well she knows that this is what he's done.

"I'm in here for self harm."

"That's what I thought. I wasn't sure but I had my suspicions. Thank you for telling me, Austin. But please stop."

"I can't. I've tried so many times for you and All Time Low and Fall Out Boy and Paramore and all these other bands and I tried for my mom and dad and brother but I can't. I'm addicted to it, and there's no way to wean me off of it. I've been doing it for two years now, and I've done it everyday. As much as I love you, Ally, I can't stop. You get it. You can't stop not eating. You can't eat, just like I can't stop bringing the razor to my skin and slicing."

"Austin, I - "

He cuts her off. "I made you a CD." He breaks their hands apart and brings it out from behind his back. "I missed you a lot and I wanted to get you a present, so here you go. These are the songs I listened to when I was gone."

She looks at the CD's cover. "_For Ally_," it reads in messy boy handwriting at the top. It goes on to list some of their favorite songs:

_1: "Emo" - Blink-182_

_2: "Now" - Paramore_

_3: "The Mighty Fall" - Fall Out Boy_

_4: "210B" - Man Overboard_

_5: "Born For This" - Paramore_

_6: "I Miss You" - Blink-182_

_7: "West Coast Smoker" - Fall Out Boy_

_8: "Under A Paper Moon" - All Time Low_

_9: "Looking Up" - Paramore_

_10: "Bigcitydreams" - NeverShoutNever_

_11: "No Different" - Tonight Alive_

_12: "Atlas" - Man Overboard_

_13: "I Don't Care If You're Contagious" - Pierce The Veil_

_14: "I'll Run" - The Cab_

_15: "For Baltimore" - All Time Low_

_16: "Safe & Sound" - Tonight Alive_

_17: "Both Sides Of The Story" - We Are The In Crowd_

_18: "American Idiot" - Green Day_

_19: "Stay With Me" - Handguns_

_20: "Give 'Em Hell, Kid" - My Chemical Romance_

_21: "Stay" - Mayday Parade_

_22: "Remembering Sunday" - All Time Low_

_23: "The Only Hope For Me Is You" - My Chemical Romance_

_24: "All We Know" - Paramore_

_25: "Jasey Rae (Acoustic)" - All Time Low_

She smiles as she reads over the songs. It's like Austin can read her mind; that's how in tune they are.

She guesses that you could call the two of them matching puzzle pieces.

**::::**

"Okay, so you're probably wondering why I called you out here at midnight on a Friday night." Austin starts with a smile. Unconsciously, because his face is stretched in a grin, she smiles too.

"Uh, yeah. I'm kinda tired." Ally says jokingly, rolling her eyes. There's a bit of truth in her statement, though; Austin had had a nightmare last night and she couldn't fall asleep due to their close proximity. Her heart had been racing faster than the speed of sound and her blood had been pumping and there was just no way she was going to fall asleep, not with her first love beside her.

"I'm so-_rry!_" Austin says sarcastically, holding his hands up in surrender. "You know how that works."

"Unfortunately," she adds, laughing. "Now cut to the chase, Austin Monica."

He pulls his face into a pout, but continues. "So I have something to tell you and something to ask you."

"Okay..." Ally says, performing the universal gesture of "_continue_."

"I'm two weeks clean because of you." He says, smiling proudly. "So thank you."

"Austin! That's amazing! I'm so proud of you!" She flings herself at him and he catches her, pulling her into a hug and then spinning her around. "I love you so much!"

The world seems to stop.

"S-sorry, did I say that? I meant to say - " Ally starts, flushing and stuttering and breaking out of the hug. She did _not _mean to say it, true as it may be. It was a total and complete accident, and _fuck, she's such an idiot._

"Actually, I was going to ask you to be my girlfriend."

"Y-you were?"

"Yeah. So, what'd you say?"

"Fuck yeah," she says breathlessly. "_Fuck yes_. Of course. I'll be your girlfriend."

"So it's okay if I do this?"

"Do what?" She asks, cocking her head in confusion.

"You'll see," Austin says smirking before pulling her closer, lowering his head, and pressing his lips to hers. She melts into the kiss, wrapping her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist. His hands tighten around her lower back, and she presses herself as close as physically possible to him. Her fingers find their way into her hair, and he moans as she tugs lightly on his blonde strands.

They pull apart, breathless.

"Best kiss I've ever had." Ally states plainly, hopping off of him and threading her fingers with his.

"You had me wrapped around your finger," Austin sings, and she swats at his head. 5 Seconds of Summer is another band they both like, and when he sings their songs it makes her heart flutter.

Actually, anything he does makes her heart flutter.

"Even if it all came crashing down, as long as you're around, I'll be safe and sound," She mumbles as she presses her face into his chest.

"You can say that again."

**::::**

"Are you sure you want to do this? It's going to hurt." Austin says, looking at Ally with concern gracing his face. "I have a few. They all hurt like hell for days afterwards."

"I want to do this. It was my idea, dumbass." She shoots him a sarcastic look, swinging their hands as they sit side by side in the tattoo parlor. "Besides, I don't think we'll be breaking up any time soon. We've been together for three years now, and we've known each other for four."

"Only if you're positive."

"One-hundred percent."

"Okay. Let's do this."

A few hours later, Ally groans as they walk out of the tattoo parlor. "This _hurts_."

"Well, I told you it would."

"At least we match," she says, beaming. "I love you."

"I love you more."

"Yeah, right, loser. I think it's obvious I love you more."

"Nah, Ally. I think I do."

"Nope."

"I do, and I have a question for you."

"And that question is?"

Austin drops to one knee, holding out a small black box. Ally gasps. "Allyson Marie Dawson, will you marry me?"


End file.
